Please post in this thread to see what I'm talking about.
[hide]So in the Harry Potter Spoiler thread we're seeing what happens when people use the hide feature to conceal spoilers--they hate it. The way this works is, you write <hide> at the beginning of your comment, and </hide> at the end, but with brackets instead of arrows, and then no one can see your comment until they've posted in the same thread. This is fantastically annoying, and many of you have complained, but it also has a lot of good things going for it as well: for example, if someone clicks on the "Most recent posts" link at the bottom they'll see the 10 most recent posts out of context--meaning that they'll see a spoiler without seeing the spoiler warning in the thread title first. Hiding certain comments until after you've posted in the thread is a nice courtesy to people who use this feature.
So, I'm asking you all: how much do you really hate this feature? It's unlikely we can do anything about it in the near future, other than just not use the <hide> tags, but I want your feedback anyway. Should it be abolished forever? Is it wonderful? Is it tolerable once you understand that it helps certain people? Let us know.[/hide]